Graham Reid | | <1 min read
I am the Road
If you don't whisper “Everly Brothers” within 10 seconds of the opening track Desperado (an original) on this album by a duo out of Minneapolis then your music history is woefully lacking.
If it isn't, by the fourth track Gotta Lotta Love (another original with a ringingly familiar title) you'll be shouting those words at the stereo.
Page Burkum and Jack Torrey pull out these sibling-type harmonies well – without the special élan of the Brothers – and their gentle country-rock also harks back to that earlier time.
They divert towards Buddy Holly's smart melodic and lyrical simplicity for the Downtown (nope, not the Petula Clark hit but a bantamweight comment on Trump-privilege and minimum wage America).
Some of this is well-intentioned but lyrically clumsy (the leaden rhymes and images in the very long five minutes of the plodding Boomerang a prime offender) and repetitive (See It Through).
If not downright dull (I am the Road with some of the laziest lyrics and cliches since . . . well, since Boomerang actually).
In places this is one of those really-really nice and inoffensive albums which mostly wears other people's suits and is somewhat joyless in its country melancholy.
Nice enough singers, shame about the bloodless songs and the glaring lack of originality.
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